The James Bond series has always had gushing reviews of their gadgety goodness, even before Jesus' take on Quantum of Solace. This January 1966 article, “James Bond's Weird World of Inventions” look backs to the time when Sean Connery was filling 007's shoes. Remember the Disco Volante, the110-foot hydrofoil floating fortress? How about the Bell jet-pack Bond uses in the opening scenes of Thunderball?

Most of the infernal devices never existed in the original Ian Fleming stories. “Our only excuse for using them” says screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “is that such devices are available and cry out to be buckled onto James Bond’s back.”

Interestingly enough, while most of the tech found in Quantum of Solace can possibly be made, Thunderball's $500,000 budget imagined up a whole slew of inventions that had never been seen before. Have movie goers become addicted to portrayals of Bond more rooted in reality, or are our gadgets so advanced now that we don't have to make them up? [Modern Mechanix via Neatorama]